I was kicking myself to get this up. Every day for the past two weeks it's been "DAMMIT! IT'S GOING UP TODAY!!" and then failure... (why is it taking so long to write?? Hopefully I'll speed up, soon...)

What? This isnt just a random story for Allen to suffer in? It actually has a plot?? (well, no, not really, but... Yeah... or something like a plot getting started, I think... ) (I hope I got all the historic events okay... the site I referenced seemed to like wars more than anything. )

I've been haunting the crossover area for a while (and I never realized how much I remembered of X-men and Batman until I actually read some things including them D8 ) If anyone wants I can give some stories that are guaranteed to keep you busy until y next update. Especially if you're not like me and prefer to take time with reading chapters as opposed to staying up as long as it takes to finish entire stories....

Is anyone else having trouble with the new reply messaging thing? 'Cause if it's just me, then that's why some people got double replies and/or none at all, so sorry about that...

I think there are more bugs on my wall then there are outside... I'm being civil to them and everything (conservationist ftw) it's just when they start sucking my blood I squash them... the world could learn a lot from that.

Allen's angsting took 4 whole pages. Oh yeah, I still got it. And the whole thing stretches out to 9 ¾ pages. Ba-BOOM! 8D

Disclaimer: I own bug guts, empty sprites, insomnia and a whole lot of immunities, is there anything else that I don't know about?

A soft music played from a nearby stand, a carnival organ playing childish melodies in joyful tones. It was snowing, little white specks of coat stuffing floating down from the light gray skies. It was the first time he had felt warm in a while, especially in winter. The check-coat he had been given was his first ever present, birthday present, Mana had said. He hadn't asked what that was, he was nervous his coat would be taken away if he asked.

Looking back, he would think how silly the thought was, but at the time, bathed in distrust and spite, it was a perfectly plausible thought. Still, even then, he was so wanting to trust the big man who he had known for a year, a full year, and still hadnt once betrayed him. Not once called him a bad name nor attempted to harm him in anyway, not even his pride was ever in jeopardy with the big man.

Mana was a friend, dare he even think it.

But now was one of the times that he needed Mana, again, because he couldn't see. An older boy had gotten a look at his arm and thrown a brick at his— his forehead was bleeding now, where the skin had been scraped off, and the blood was making him close his eyes.

"Mana, I cant see," He whispered, hoping Mana was somewhere nearby. He had been only a little ways off before.

"Are you okay?" He was here. A soft grip lay on his shoulder, the deep voice of the man talking to him. It was always talking about music and happiness and the world, and it always sounded like those things.

He shook his head slowly as Mana carefully rubbed the blood away, probably on his clown uniform. He didn't want that to get dirty though, but it wasn't like he could do much when blood was blinding him.

"Mana... Mana, where...?" He reached out an invisible hand, groping around for his other in the dark. A small, soft hand, not brittle and not worn, took hold of his hand, and squeezed protectively. Like an older brother.

"I'm here," Answered a voice that wasn't Mana's. It was quieter, younger, thinner, like a child's voice. Almost like his...

Something was very wrong, but he didn't know that.

He opened his eyes quickly, ignoring the sting of the blood peddling around them, and stared at what wasn't his father. "I'm here, Damian, stop worrying, you idiot," It was a child, healthy looking and with long black hair in a pony tail down his back.

He smiled, but he didn't smile. Someone else took his mouth and made him smile, but he wasn't the one trying to smile— and then he said something in a voice that wasn't his, had never been his, and never would be his—

(will be yours)

"Sorry, brother."

Allen sniffed as he woke, tears pulling at puffied, bleeding eyes. His arms scraped themselves against their sockets and joints and his whole body ached.

It was a dark room, and he was cold. His weary eyes opened halfheartedly.

He wanted to die.

The soft sounds of falling tears echoed around the room as the last rays of light in it were choked off as a door at the far end of the room, a thin, thin strip of light that cut briefly across his face before it vanished, and he was in the dark again.

The dark, cold room, all alone. Alone.

The edges of the chains were cold against him and the links pinched his skin, even as he simply lay there, shivering. He had subconsciously realized that he didn't have even the dirtied rag of a shirt left from before. The feeling of being exposed on golem film returned to him, like he were being displayed for the whole world to see his disgrace. What he could become, what he had been, what he was.

I killed a man. The thought was dull and lifeless within him, but it echoed resoundingly in the absence of everything else within him. I may have killed more. He had scared them at least. He had done that a lot, he thought, and he hadn't enjoyed a single minute of it. One might imagine a prisoner would like to frighten their captors in some way, at least, but he hated the thought and tried to roughly pushed it away like it were a burning rod, only to have it replaced with another empty thought that twisted his stomach. I probably did kill more.

His lips were chapped, he noted. They were dry and painful as he rubbed them together. His wrists hurt, he thought. They seared angrily above him, along with most of his arms and underarms, but for whatever reason, the feeling didn't seem to reach his brain. His legs were still, he realized. He had no idea how long he'd been hanging there, dead as a mannequin, waiting for someone to poke another needle in him.

That made him think of Espidan, and his consciousness almost slipped at the simple thought. He would rather thinking about death over thinking about torture.

...or maybe he wouldn't, he didn't know exactly.

He hated the prospect of death, he knew that, right? But was it more practical to die voluntarily, or involuntarily as many cases are, rather than be tortured? If in a choice between possible death or murder or torture but little prospect of death, which would be the more accepted choice, being more ethically, 'right'?

Mortal pain versus unknown results of death and the possibility of a resurrection (though with him, a resurrection was most unlikely, as there couldn't be many who gave a shit as to if he lived or died) which would lead to eternal torture until destruction has never been exactly an easy choice for anybody, least of all Allen, and yet, he found himself pondering these questions while currently under great physical strain, emotional fatigue, and general terror, and in a state of mind he wasn't quite familiar with. More often than not, he preferred to stray from the intellectual path, acting on the beliefs he viewed as most obvious and true.

This's weird, Allen thought. His brain was aching with his attempts to answer the questions he had brought up himself, cluttering everything up, though it was certainly much better than any of the empty thoughts that he had been having earlier, maybe not even a minute earlier.

And that thought brought him back to something else that he didn't want to think about.

Did people who killed other people still get a second chance in Heaven? Or what if there was no Heaven? Or like the Episcopalians' believe, those who want to die automatically forfeit any and all chance to get into Heaven?

Yet again, what if there was no Heaven and it was all just a hopeless hoax to get people to believe in something bigger and allow people the strength to live their lives fairly and theoretically without intentionally causing harm to others around them? What if Heaven was a state of mind, or a comfort zone?

What if he died to find out? Would anyone ever know the truth? WOULD ANYTHING AMOUT TO ANYTHING IF HE COULDN'T SEE IT HIMSELF?

The answer to that, of course, was no.

He wanted to see it. He wanted to see the people going into town each morning, he wanted to see them going to the fairgrounds, he wanted to see the people he cared about again, he wanted to see them survive the war, he wanted to see the downfall of the Earl, he wanted to see the new Millennium, he wanted to see all that lay beyond the year 1900.

He wanted to see Queen Victoria's Funeral, he wanted to see the Wright Brother's first plane, he wanted to see The North Pole being reached, he wanted to see Gandhi lead India out of rule, he wanted to see The Great War, he wanted to see the American Flappers, he wanted to see the Great Depression, he wanted to see World War II, he wanted to see The Yalta Conference, he wanted to see the era of Jazz, he wanted to see Martin Luther King Jr. make a speech, he wanted to see the first man on the moon, he wanted....

He wanted...

The philosophical shield he had created shattered and he began to cry again. His head tilted down as his face grew so hot that he soon couldn't even tell if the tears were streaming anymore, he couldn't feel them on his burning skin. He soon couldn't breathe through his nose, his mouth open and gasping as sobs racked his pining frame.

He didn't want this! HE DIDN'T WANT THIS! He didn't want to die! He didn't want to be trapped here forever, in the dark, cold and alone and in pain! Why did it have to be him? Why? Why was it always him who was stuck with the misery and suffering?

Why?WHY? Never once had he complained or withered, not a single bemoaning word had passed his lips all these years and yet he was still here, in pain, hoping desperately for something to turn around— wasn't hoping and acting and trying so hard his hands were crippled and his feet were burnt, wasn't that enough for something?

"GOD, DAMN YOU!" He shouted. "I'M TIRED OF WAITING, IF YOU'RE REALLY UP THERE, AND I'M YOUR FUCKING FAVORITE, HELP ME, DAMN YOU, HELP ME!"

He stared at the ceiling, dark and stone. Cold. His chest rose and fell almost evenly, almost, but his breathing was harsh.

He was waiting, eyes light and a childish brown color, waiting. Waiting for something. Waiting, waiting when he himself could not act. And he waited, waited for it.

"Help me, already," He whispered, almost inaudibly to his own ears. His tears had stopped, but the tares were still there, in his flesh and in his mind. "Why... why aren't you h-helping m-me?" His eyes trembled, reverting back to a sorrowful gray. His voice shook and his lower lip was quivering.

"I-if you're so.. so powerful..." He sniffed, his head falling onto his chest, "And so... so loving and m-magni... magnificent, then... t-then why..." His whole body trembled again. He was so angry, so scared, but mostly, he was tired. He was tired and he wanted to sleep a long sleep.

A long and beautiful sleep filled with magical, pretty, lying dreams that hadn't a hint of blood or fighting or death or pain. Something sugar-coated and completely fake, just like the warm arms of a man long, long ago used to be. He hadn't ever been sugar-coated before those arms, and had always thought it the best feeling ever. Why else would he try to sugar-coat everything? It made it bearable!

And no one had ever thanked him for it, never once. They all told him to grow up and keep his stupidity to himself.

If only they could see him now... he wanted to die, but he was so scared of it... he wanted to live.

"Why do y-you hate m-me so much?" He asked, begging the invisible, mocking being for an answer. But he would never get one.

He never got an honest reply from it in his life, and another tear echoed on the floor.

000

He was almost asleep. Almost, nearly escaping the darkness with blank dreams he wasn't even sure he had anymore when the door opened, bursting a painful light onto his face. He yelped at the light and was stiff, stunned in surprise, as he hadn't heard footsteps. Perhaps he had been closer to sleep than he thought?

"He's awake," A voice he didn't know— he had met a lot of voices like that, and almost all of them belonged to foot soldiers, guards. The didn't let many others contact him other than nurses and Crows. It was still so hard to tell which guards were what though; which would beat him if he struggled and which would make it so he couldn't right away. The ones that would be cruel on purpose and those that would be more careful. Ones that tried not to hurt him as he was unchained and ones that had tried to break his wrists on more than one occasion.

"Good, get him down," Nina's voice, darker than usual. He hoped she had gotten a kinder guard, at least this once, he hoped to not be in more pain. Just one more time wasn't too much, was it?

The footsteps unhidden in army boots were getting louder, and soon, he'd know. He wasn't sure he wanted to, though. He didn't want to discover someone had carefully taken him away only to send him back more damaged. The remnant of a shell of a heart would snap in half instantly if that happened. But he didn't want to be pulled on uncaring, the touch of a person who truly believed with all their hearts that he was an evil traitor. His heart wouldn't snap in half neatly, he was sure it would shatter.

He shivered at the carefulness the hands used to slowly unravel the chains that indented his skin and choked the movement out of him. Inch by inch, the guard lowered him to the floor until he slumped against the wall, his back bent oddly, his arms and legs numb under and around him and his neck twisting in a painful way, a few chains still gripping his left arm.

The soldier hesitated to unbind it, standing still in front of Allen for a long time. So long, it seemed, Allen had the time to very slowly and painfully readjust his neck, opening his eyes to be able to see, in the vaguest manner of the word.

The soldier in front of him was a boy, his head was shaved and he wore glasses and a red uniform, but his face was shaped like a boy's. The person who he had been crying and begging for to let him go was so young, and still, hesitating to touch him, like he was a vile little insect that couldn't be touched directly for fear of catching a deadly virus.

He stood so long Nina got down and undid that arm's chains herself.

The seals remained, cursing him to be weighted down so heavily it was painful, his arm always unmoving at his side. But mainly just cursing him to be seen, defenseless, and as a criminal.

"Allen?" Nina brushed hair out of his face, still red and stiff. His eyes moved slowly to look at her, but he tried not to move anything else. Breathing hurt. "Allen, you're being moved," she said. "You aren't going to be in a cell anymore, okay?"

He heard the words, but they didn't make any sense to him.

"Nurse, I don't think he understands you..." The guard said slowly, as though somewhat fearful of being reprimanded. Of course he was, Allen had seen Nina berate many guards and even Crows and Levirrier at times over how they treated themselves and, on occasion, frightened those who came too close to Allen's area with crueler things in their minds.

Of course he was was a little nervous around her.

"He can hear me," Nina said, through a cotton screen, Allen thought the guard relaxed a little as she didn't sound angry. "He just cant respond right now."

"Why not?" Ignorance.

"Because he's probably paralyzed and in agony right now!" Ah, there came the snap. The soldier shrunk fearfully. Nina scoffed. "Stop being a baby, he cant move, much less stand on his own, so help me!" The guard scrambled down to Allen's level, tenderly lifting the boy up by his waist, and feeling quite uncomfortable as he did. "Mind his arm," Nina hissed as she worked under the boy as well.

Within the first five attempts, Nina had sent the soldier to get Thomas from 'whatever the hell he was doing, 'cause it certainly wasn't as important as this' and the soldier sprinted, happy to get out of the dark room with the injured boy and the angry head nurse.

000

He was still aching when Thomas had come, the big man scooping his small form up easily. He fit well in his arms, like a child being carried by a father.

Consciously or not, he relaxed himself in Thomas's arms, warm, strong, and protecting him. The contact with another human being, and some so careful and genuine was rare, precious. He didn't want to be taken out of those arms and just be rocked to sleep by his footsteps jostling him slightly up and down. Like a house near a railroad, when the trains became a lullaby that rocked you to sleep.

He would have been oh, so happy to just remember the places he'd been in the arms. Because he missed remembering without shame.

He missed not having his limbs ache each time he woke up.

He missed the straining smiles and the loud noises and the music and the people. Allen muttered something to Thomas.

"I'm tired."

Thomas didn't say anything, he must not have heard him.

Allen's eyes opened wearily, burning from the lights, and he wasn't even sure why he opened them anymore. Each time they opened something worse seemed to happen. He was tired of it. Tired of not having a name...

"Allen?" Soft, human hands brushed hair off his cheek, smooth and gentle. "Are you awake again?" He didn't move, just flickering his eyes and looking around for her.

He couldn't see Nina, she must have been beside him.

"We're almost there," She said, "Can you stay awake for a bit longer?" He opened his mouth a bit, just enough for a small grunted gasp to come out. He didn't feel like he could talk. "Alright, just hold on for a bit longer..."

"Just down here, Head Nurse," The soldier from before said, not sounding but so surprised at the gentleness that Nina used with the semi-conscious Noah. Or what people said was a Noah. He looked so... average. Like a child, young, but frightened... and hurt.

That was probably why Nina was being so careful with him. He looked like he would die if you pricked him with a pin, all the life coming flooding out of a ever-so-small hole.

A turn left and two doors down. "This is it," He pulled out a keyring and handed it to Nina, the five key to all the different locks on the door clacking together and making her frown. So many locks, and the door was some sort of dulled metal, with no gap between it and the floor. Whoever designed it didn't like the prospect of the person within getting out.

She fiddled with the keys, trying each to discover which lock fit which, using the most obvious thing she could think of— process of elimination. When a key fit into one, she held it off to the side with there thumb and proceeded onto the next lock quickly, hoping to get Allen inside and take care of him while he was still able to keep a hold on reality. Finally, the door opened.

As she looked in, the room had no decorations.

There wasn't a window on any of the walls, just peppers of binding spells stuck in seemingly random places. There was a single block rising out of and still connected to the floor that acted as a table, a smaller block beside it as a chair. A bed was in the corner across from the entrance, a bed without sheets and with a stiff mattress that didn't look like it would bend if they put half the staff of the Order on it. There was no pillow, no comfort, nothing to decorate the walls or ceiling except for an air vent in the center, far away from walls and a speaker beside it. The lights were built into the panels above them. This was a safety room.

In the other far corner, there was a small inlet, that, upon looking in, was a bathroom. There wasn't a door on it. A simple toilet and a sink with no heat control and no other hygienic tools, such as a razor or a bathtub, were anywhere in sight. There were no mirrors nor movable objects of any sort.

There was a small device beside the door on the wall that could change temperature— it had limits on how hot or cold anything in the room could get. Everything in the room was dead-bolted down and as safe as any cell would ever get.

Nina swallowed nervously as Thomas set Allen on the bed and the soldier stood back in the doorway. It was infinitely better than the cell in the basement, but it was still inhumane to hold anyone here in the colorless confines of such a room where even suicide looked impossible.

They really thought this through, Nina told herself. He cant get out of here, not with his arm bound and no mind...

The boy was still on the bed apart from the shallow and shaky rise and fall of his chest. A wheezing sound penetrated the world of silence in the room, like some sort of liquid was inside his lungs.

Nina frowned. She wouldn't be so surprised if there was a lot of shit in him, just judging by the outward appearance.

Allen hadn't been cleaned off in the past month, blood and fluids and sweat plastering his hair together and onto his forehead, smearing over his face and chest, with stray strands of the shirt he had been given still clinging onto him. His cheeks were bony and his eyes dark with lack of sleep, his sides coming in to cling around his ribs from the food that was so infrequent and in much too small amounts.

The scar on his face was getting darker, she thought, the red looking more poisonous than any sort of scar tissue she had ever seen.

Oh, who was she kidding? Scars weren't even supposed to be red.

She shivered, not because of the controlled cool, but something else that was radiating in the room. It could have been the daunting blandness or the strange lights built into the ceiling, the thought that the room was inescapable or the simple presence of the person the room had been designed for in the first place.

He was currently lying on the bed, wheezing.

Nina shook her head. This was too much, no matter what anyone said. Turning, she ushered Thomas and the guard out before exiting herself and closing the door behind her, with nothing but a small whisper of reassurance that she was sure the child would never believe.

000

"It'll get better now..."

I don't believe you.

It was the only thought he had to fill the empty place in his mind, but soon, more followed.

My chest hurts.

Was one of the first.

My chest hurts. Why are the lights like that? Where am I? Nina normally stays longer. I wonder why she didn't. I don't believe her. What was that? Oh, the door. That was the locks. Click is such an annoying sound. I wonder who locked it. Was it Nina? I don't believe her. Normally she stays longer. My chest hurts. I cant move. Is it going to heal? It's bright in here.

His eyelids flickered as he stared up into the lights above him, put into the ceiling. That wasn't normal.

It's so quiet here. Is that my breathing? My chest hurts. My arm's heavy. Those lights are bright. Why is everything so quiet? Oh, right, no one's in here but me. I forgot. I wonder why they left. Nina usually stays longer. Was that a click? What's that click from? The door's already locked, right? Nina locked it. That's weird. She normally stays longer.

A second click sounded and the room was plunged into darkness.

Allen's eyes widened and the laxness of his mind was thrown askew with familiar crushing panic. That was how he discovered the final feature of the room that Nina had missed.

The walls were completely soundproofed.

Challenge: Guess what each feature or lack-there-of is doing in the room and how it works.
ex- (lack) no razor (why) Allen cant commit suicide (how) because he cant cut his wrists
I put a lot of thought into the room, so... yeah, I'm hoping people will notice things 8) I could design a mental hospital... but it would probably make the patients more mental if I did...